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Warning: This review touches on some potentially controversial political subject matter, if you’re sensitive to political incorrectness and disturbing content this series and even this review isn’t for you.

What’s it about?The golden age arc continues giving us more background story on Guts as he becomes more twisted in the head and then deals with some spoilery things.

Pros:The story keeps building and is still very interesting.The art is still fantastic, probably my favorite art in manga. So many wonderful panels. There’s a surprising amount of detail which you don’t get in a lot of manga.The characters are still interesting. Of course Guts is still an interesting bad-a**. We get introduced to some new characters. I think Casca is gonna be pretty awesome as the series continues!There’s some more fantastic, exciting and brutal action drawn in an amazing way! It also does things that a lot of action stories don’t do nearly enough which is making the action brutal emotionally as well as gory. Don’t get me wrong, readers will still most likely be excited to see Guts dismember the enemy but it touches on how the big, tough, bad-a** who mercilessly kills the enemy is affected by it.There’s some pretty good dialogue in here.We get more background on Guts which really improves the character to me. I already thought he was a bad-a** but this origin story thing gives him a lot more character.This book does horror right. I like how instead of the typical gore, demons and monster kinda horror (which don’t get me wrong, that stuff is still really good and is the kind of thing this series often includes) it actually makes horror out of character PTSD which is unique and super well done.

Why not 5 stars?This volume is kinda predictable. Part of my brain slightly expected that, I was just hoping that part of my brain was wrong. Yeah, I am on volume 4 so there’s a good chance I’ll know how things in various parts of the story are gonna play out and I have seen 2 out of the 3 movies based on this arc (I’m not watching the third until I finish reading it) so I knew some stuff from that but I like being surprised by the books I read, in this one I wasn’t surprised by much.

Regarding some politically incorrect things:In one scene of this Guts asks if someone is a “h*m*” and later in the scene uses the term “f*g boy”. Now I didn’t mind it because I’m almost never offended by anything and it was part of a joke which I will admit I did get a pretty good laugh from but I was surprised. What disturbed me about that isn’t that a politically incorrect term was used but that today’s PC culture is so crazy that I sat there reading a volume of a series which includes arrows being shot at people, graphic dismemberment, decapitation, throats being slit, rape, child abuse and nudity yet I’m surprised because Guts said “f*g”. Am I the only one disturbed by that? Seriously. There’s something wrong with that.

Overall:Another great volume of my favorite manga! Despite the predictability this is still a great series with fantastic art and action, I’m also happy that we get more background story on who Guts is! I still highly recommend this series!

Read information about the author

Kentarou Miura (三浦 建太郎) was born in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in 1966. He is left-handed. In 1976, at the early age of 10, Miura made his first Manga, entitled "Miuranger", that was published for his classmates in a school publication; the manga ended up spanning 40 volumes. In 1977, Miura created his second manga called Ken e no michi (剣への道 The Way to the Sword), using Indian ink for the first time. When he was in middle school in 1979, Miura's drawing techniques improved greatly as he started using professional drawing techniques. His first dōjinshi was published, with the help of friends, in a magazine in 1982.

That same year, in 1982, Miura enrolled in an artistic curriculum in high school, where he and his classmates started publishing their works in school booklets, as well as having his first dōjinshi published in a fan-produced magazine. In 1985, Miura applied for the entrance examination of an art college in Nihon University. He submitted Futanabi for examination and was granted admission. This project was later nominated Best New Author work in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Another Miura manga Noa was published in Weekly Shōnen Magazine the very same year. Due to a disagreement with one of the editors, the manga was stalled and eventually dropped altogether. This is approximately where Miura's career hit a slump.

In 1988, Miura bounced back with a 48-page manga known as Berserk Prototype, as an introduction to the current Berserk fantasy world. It went on to win Miura a prize from the Comi Manga School. In 1989, after receiving a doctorate degree, Kentarou started a project titled King of Wolves (王狼, ōrō?) based on a script by Buronson, writer of Hokuto no Ken. It was published in the monthly Japanese Animal House magazine in issues 5 and 7 of that year.

In 1990, a sequel is made to Ourou entitled Ourou Den (王狼伝 ōrō den, The Legend of the Wolf King) that was published as a prequel to the original in Young Animal Magazine. In the same year, the 10th issue of Animal House witnesses the first volume of the solo project Berserk was released with a relatively limited success. Miura again collaborated with Buronson on manga titled Japan, that was published in Young Animal House from the 1st issue to the 8th of 1992, and was later released as a stand-alone tankōbon. Miura's fame grew after Berserk was serialized in Young Animal in 1992 with the release of "The Golden Age" story arc and the huge success of his masterpiece made of him one of the most prominent contemporary mangakas. At this time Miura dedicates himself solely to be working on Berserk. He has indicated, however, that he intends to publish more manga in the future.

In 1997, Miura supervised the production of 25 anime episodes of Berserk that aired in the same year on NTV. Various art books and supplemental materials by Miura based on Berserk are also released. In 1999, Miura made minor contributions to the Dreamcast video game Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage. 2004 saw the release of yet another video game adaptation entitled Berserk Millennium Falcon Arc: Chapter of the Record of the Holy Demon War.

Since that time, the Berserk manga has spanned 34 tankōbon with no end in sight. The series has also spawned a whole host of merchandise, both official and fan-made, ranging from statues, action figures to key rings, video games, and a trading card game. In 2002, Kentarou Miura received the second place in the Osamu Tezuka Culture Award of Excellence for Berserk.[1]

Miura provided the design for the Vocaloid Kamui Gakupo, whose voice is taken from the Japanese singer and actor, Gackt.